Live Again

It was 5AM on a Saturday morning, Michela’s mom Hope walked into the room and yelled get up or we’ll be late. Michela an 18-year-old high school graduate felt like she had just gotten into bed a few minutes ago, but it was her first day at Mulungushi University, one of the most well to do schools in the country and it was going to be a long drive so she had no choice but get up. Michela was a dark brown eyed girl with dark skin and curly shoulder length hair. She was born in a small country in the southern part of Africa called Zambia. In the country, many traditional rules were set up as to how a girl child should be brought up. How she should talk, what she should wear, who she should talk to and so on. Not only did the country have traditional rules but also had less privileges compared to other countries in the world. Because of its poor development, many teenagers could only get the opportunity to drive at the age of 22-24 and those mostly came from rich and well to do families. In this case, Michela was one of the not so privileged kids, so her parents were driving her to school today. She was so nervous, she had already missed orientation week and was nervous about making new friends, meeting her roommate and so many other things. Luckily, on every waking day, she’d writing down everything she wanted to do in that day on her to do list, so that she could have the perfect day, so this was going to be a piece of cake. They started off at 6AM from Lusaka which is the capital city of Zambia and Mulungushi University was two hours away in Kapiri, a township in one of the Provinces of the country. Mulungushi was known to be the school with the most privileged kids in the country so Michela worried she’d not fit in, seeing as the kids there were keeping up with the trends and she wasn’t. They arrived at Mulungushi University at around 8AM. Michela did her registration, got her room that was currently empty unpacked her bags and said goodbye to her parents. Now that she was all alone every decision was hers to make and this made her really nervous. She cleaned up her room and arranged her things in an orderly manner, checking everything she had done so far off her to do list. By the time she had finished cleaning up and refreshing her new roommate came in, her name was Sharon, she was short and looked much younger than Michela. She began to unpack her luggage as her and Michela talked and got to know each other. Michela discovered Sharon was also not from a very well to do family, and that they had so much in common. Later that evening, they took a tour around their new school together and Michela was sure she was very much going to like her new roommate and that they’d get along just fine. The next morning, Michela woke up feeling confident about her new school and decided to go for an early morning run, while on her run, a stranger began to follow her right behind as she was going down the road near the school lake. Michela began to panic and increase her pace but so did the stranger, at this point she got scared and started running really fast that she slipped and fell on her knee. She started to scream for help as the stranger approached and covered her mouth. “hey, hey, hey, please don’t scream, I didn’t mean to scare you, I’m Mark”, he said, then reached his hand out so he could help her up. “I’m a foreign exchange student here and I’m usually the only one that takes early morning run around here, so when I saw you I thought it might be good to have some company for once, so I thought I might say hey, I really didn’t mean to frighten you”, he said with a smile. Still in shock, Michela took his hand and got up saying “you scared the hell out of me” and continued to run. “well I’m sorry once again”, Mark said, following her closely as she run, “I didn’t get your name”? “Not important”, shouted Michela as she approached the hostel where her room was. Mark increased his pace and grabbed her hand then got on one knee, “come on, forgive me, will you?” he said with a smile “I said no, now stop following me”, Michela said as she slipped her hand out of his, turned, smiled and rushed into her hostel. Mark stood there, puzzled by how flirty yet full of attitude Michela had just behaved towards him. Michela entered the room and immediately after shutting the door she began to laugh, “what’s up with you?” asked Sharon who was now up and having breakfast by the table. “well, some foreign exchange student named Mark just stopped me as I was running asking for my name”. “okay, well what’s so funny about that?” Sharon asked, “He was all flirty towards me, Ha! Like I’d ever go out with a guy like him”, said Michela as she sat down to take her shoes off. “Well, what’s your type then?” Sharon asked in a shy tone. “I don’t know, just not him”, answered Michela sarcastically walking out the room to avoid the confrontation.     Later that Afternoon, Michela laid on her bed and began to replay the whole incident in her mind. He began to smile as she remembered his Smile, and his physic. She reached for her phone and began to search everywhere for him. She tried i********:, Twitter, f*******: and even Tinder but they all had too many people by his name and not having a last name jus made this even harder. She got off her bed and decided to write down all the features of the perfect guy she’d go out with. “whoever matches everything on my perfect boyfriend list will be the person I will date”, she thought to herself as she finished writing down everything she wanted in a guy. “Now”, she said to herself, “lets find you your Mr. Perfect”.